Workboard vs Asana
The open-source Asana alternative
Asana's free plan now stops at two people, and single sign-on only arrives at the Enterprise tier. Workboard is open source, self-hostable, and gives every team the whole product.
Short answer: is Workboard a good Asana alternative?
Workboard is an open-source, MIT-licensed alternative to Asana that you can self-host for free with unlimited users. Asana is cloud-only, priced per user from $10.99 a month, and keeps SAML single sign-on for its Enterprise tier. Workboard covers boards, backlog, workflows, roles, and time tracking, without Asana's portfolios, goals, or workload views.
- License
- MIT, versus a proprietary licence for Asana
- Hosting
- Self-host anywhere, or EU-hosted cloud. Asana is cloud only
- Single sign-on
- Free on every Workboard build, Enterprise tier on Asana
- Pricing
- $0 self-hosted, cloud from $4 / month
Asana details checked on 19 August 2026. Asana pricing, Workboard pricing.
Why teams choose Workboard
The free tier is the whole product
Self-hosted Workboard has no seat cap and no feature gates. Asana's Personal plan tops out at two users and holds back timeline, forms, and automations.
Single sign-on without a sales call
Connect Google, GitHub, Discord, or any OIDC provider on any Workboard build. Asana puts SAML behind Enterprise, which is quote-only pricing.
Work, not work management
Workboard gives you boards, a backlog, workflows, labels, and time tracking. There is no portfolio layer to maintain and no reporting suite to configure first.
When Asana is the better choice
Asana is genuinely strong at cross-team coordination: portfolios, goals, workload balancing, and approval flows for a marketing or operations org. If a program manager needs to see fifty projects roll up into one status view, Asana does that and Workboard does not.
Workboard vs Asana, answered
Is there an open-source alternative to Asana?
Yes. Workboard is MIT licensed and free to self-host with unlimited users. Other open-source options include OpenProject, Plane, Taiga, and Leantime. None of them replicate Asana's portfolio and goals layer, which is usually the point of switching.
Can Asana be self-hosted?
No. Asana is a hosted SaaS product with no on-premise edition. If your requirement is keeping project data on infrastructure you control, you need a different tool.
How many users does Asana's free plan allow?
Asana's Personal plan is limited to 2 users. Paid plans start at $10.99 per user a month billed annually for Starter and $24.99 for Advanced, with SAML SSO first appearing on Enterprise.
Does Workboard have time tracking like Asana?
Yes. Time entries are built into Workboard tasks on every build, including the free self-hosted one. In Asana, time tracking is a paid-tier feature.